Scores flee Australian floods: officials
Pastor Dale Morgan
Scores flee Australian floods: officials*
SYDNEY, Jan 21 (AFP) Jan 21, 2008
Surging floodwaters forced scores of people to evacuate their homes in
northeastern Australia on Monday, officials said, as farmers described
heavy rains as a mixed blessing after years of drought.
Worst-hit by the rising waters was the central Queensland town of
Emerald, where people left their homes for higher ground as the swollen
Nogoa River threatened to inundate parts of the town.
"There's been about 120 people who have voluntarily relocated at the
moment -- that happened last night and this morning," a State Emergency
Services spokeswoman told AFP.
"But it's likely that a further 250 dwellings will be voluntarily
evacuated this afternoon."
Emergency workers also carried out helicopter evacuations near Emerald
after workers at the Ensham coalmine, about 40 kilometres (25 miles)
east of the town, were cut off by the rising waters.
Elsewhere in the state, floodwaters were threatening the southwestern
town of Charleville, but officials were confident they would be contained.
Queensland state premier Anna Bligh said while the focus was on the
major population centres of Emerald and Charleville, there were also
"many, many, many properties that have been isolated" by the rising waters.
Large parts of Australia have been hit by heavy rains in recent weeks --
including the drought affected eastern states of Queensland in the north
and Victoria in the south -- raising hopes that an end to the worst dry
spell in living memory could be in sight.
But Queensland farmers said the latest deluge was a mixed blessing
because it came at the cost of millions of dollars in lost crops and stock.
Brett De Hayr, head of the agricultural group AgForce, said the losses
from the flooding could top a billion dollars (876 million US).
"Long-term, it is undeniably going to be extremely positive, but it's
just in the nature of these things that individuals are going to have
some fairly significant losses to wear for a while," he said.
Tony Rayner, an official with Queensland's Department of Primary
Industries, said the benefits of the floods would offset the losses.
"Generally speaking, most producers have been in long-term drought
situations -- some properties have been experiencing five to seven years
of below average rainfall -- so this is a good start to drought
recovery," he said.
But he follow-up rains were needed in February and March to break the
drought in Queensland.
"It's early days yet but some producers are quite optimistic that this
is returning to a more traditional wet season," he told AFP.
Wendy Craik, who heads the commission which steers the country's biggest
agricultural zone, the Murray-Darling Basin, said it was not known how
much water from the floods would benefit farmers further south but some
would flow into the system.
Craik said recent rains in Victoria state, much of which falls within
the Murray-Darling Basin which holds 75 percent of the country's
irrigated farmland, had also boosted water supplies.
"There was widespread rain last week through the Murray-Darling Basin --
with the exception of South Australia -- and in terms of dry land
farmers, it's looking a lot better," she told AFP.
"In terms of irrigators who rely on the Murray (River)... we still have
a long way to go to restore our storages. So we're not out of the woods
yet."